Sunday, 3 December 2017

Actually, I love sex. It took me a long time to get this
point, but I love sex, and I’m not giving it up for anything or anyone.

I lost my virginity at a very young age to date rape. (If
you haven’t read my previous post about that, you can find it here.) I have
been sexually harassed and fought it, so I have been through that nightmare.
(The harassment was merely annoying and stupid, the nightmare started when I
brought a formal complaint because the asshole was also harassing younger women
on a university campus.) I am bi-sexual. I have never discriminated against
race, religion, sex, sexual orientation or gender when it comes to my sexual
attraction. I think I’ve even been with a Republican, but we had great chemistry, so I let
the fact that he voted for Bush slide (this was before 9/11). I have never believed
in monogamy; my second marriage was an open one. I am not polyamorous; I don’t
like boundaries of any kind. I am an explorer of the human condition in all its
gore and glory.

I’m a bit loathe to bring my mental instabilities into this
conversation because mental illness is often used as a scapegoat or a reason
for dismissing my sexuality as an extension of my mental state. In the same way
the sexual empowerment of a stripper, porn star or prostitute gets dismissed if
they were sexually abused. Except that over the last few years since getting
mentally healthy (my blog post about that here), my sexual appetite, my kinky
side and my enjoyment of sex has increased - much as I am currently staring
down the barrel of menopause. (Forgive me Venus, I am aging, it’s been 3 months
since my last period.) While there might be a correlation between mental
anguish and sexuality, we tend to focus on the side of damage rather than on
the side of liberation. There are women, like me, who have released ourselves
from the stigmatisms of sexuality because we don’t connect with normalcy. In a
lot of ways, this is our superpower, much as it is judged and maligned by the
mainstream.

There was a time when sex was the only enjoyment I got from
living. It was the only time I let myself be free and the only time I let go of
(what I didn’t know at the time was debilitating) anxiety. And on more than one
occasion, it was the best reason I had to stick around. Those magnificent
moments of being devoured and devouring, of giving in completely to desire and
letting my body lead me to sensual pleasures of the flesh were absolutely
unrestrained and glorious. While I positively love women and women’s bodies,
there is something so sublime about being penetrated by a man. There is something
primal about taking in and surrounding that power, extracting everything it has
to give and transforming it into bliss for both of us. I have found nothing in
the world as exhilarating as inciting that flash of desire in a man’s eyes that
ignites his passion and takes him to a purely physical, instinctual realm. As
my mental health has significantly improved, my sexual appetites have grown not
diminished (which is why I buck against the fallacy of mental illness
compromising my ability to own my sexuality) and I am far more vocal about who
and what I am in the world now.

As a woman who has command of almost every room I’ve ever
walked into, I relish finding men who I can submit to, men who can subdue me.
Men with confidence rather than bravado, men with manners rather than
indifference, men with generosity rather than wealth, men with substance rather
than flash, men with ingenuity rather than idiosyncrasies, men who empower
rather than degrade, men who give in to the vulnerability of lust rather than
merely feeding it. Men with a certain amount of indifference – because I am not
a prize for them to win or a notch for them to gain. I demand that they are all
of what they are so that I can be all of what I am. I also demand authenticity,
which is a harder ask than many might think. All that said, I really dislike
being commanding in the bedroom, but I will not diminish myself or be
diminished there either. (I applaud women who like to be commanding, it’s just
not my taste.)

There is a difference between an asshole
and a genuine guy…

[I want to make a disclaimer: when I use the term
degradation here, I am excluding the fetish of degradation that some seek. I
applaud those who know they like that and who seek it, but it’s just not part
of the meaning of the term as I use it here.]

Can I tell when a man is genuine or when he just wants to
degrade me? You bet your sweet boots I can. And there are huge tell-tale
signs that are as subtle as they are nuanced between a genuine guy and an
asshole: the asshole starts with degradation, bravado, being pushy and
strong-arm tactics. The genuine guy starts with confidence, manners, wit,
humour, patience and I know he’ll walk away before he’d ever compromise his
core self, while the asshole will twist himself inside out just to cop a feel.

I’ve NEVER gotten a dick pick from a genuine guy – and that
one is more significant than I realised. A few months ago, I started a
flirtation online that moved to What’s-App. After a few days, he started to
send pictures – which should have tipped me off, but we had been getting pretty
hot with the texts, so I figured it was a natural extension (and I'm new to the digital sex scene). There were issues
of distance and timing, so this went on for quite some time before we arranged
to meet. 2 days before that arrangement, his wife texted me. A wife I had never
heard of. I immediately severed the
connection. (While I don’t believe in monogamy, I don’t mess around with anyone
who is in a relationship where at least one of the two believe themselves to be
in a monogamous arrangement – much as I’ve been accused by some women as being
a threat to the institution of marriage because I’m not monogamous.) When I
thought about if I should have known this guy was an asshole, I immediately
realised that the moment he sent me a dick pick, he showed his true colours.
(Sending dick picks after you’ve been intimate with someone is probably
different – even though it’s really not to my taste – but if you’re sending or
receiving dick picks before you’ve met the guy or the girl, think about what that means.)

The reasons I can rely on these tenuous-at-best signs is
that a genuine guy doesn’t need to screw me at any cost. There’s no desperation
with the genuine guy. There’s no pressure. His ego and his masculinity are not
dependent on me in any way. And most importantly, his enjoyment doesn’t come at
my expense. (I believe this is Al Franken’s problem. While he isn’t as bad as
some, he still derived his enjoyment at the expense of someone else and that’s
schmucky at best and abusive at worst, no matter how much Minnesota needs a
democratic senator.)

For the scores of men who are suddenly frightened by the
current climate of sexual harassment scandals, here’s a couple of ideas:

·Degrading a woman doesn’t increase your prowess
it just reveals that you’re an asshole

·If you proposition her without allowing yourself
to be vulnerable, you’re probably crossing a line (it’s the difference between
‘may I kiss you?’ and ‘hey, baby, give me a kiss’)

·Keep your hands to yourself – just start
thinking of women as feral beasts who will bite your hand off if you touch us
until that becomes second nature. We need to give you permission or our bodies are not available to you for any reason.

·A conversation doesn’t diminish the act – and
more importantly, if you can’t talk about it, you can’t do it. And I mean look
her in the eye (no texts, no phone calls, no emails) face-to-face talking. Meaning
if you can’t say out loud that you want anal sex, you can’t try to have anal
sex. Also, if you can't talk about condoms or birth control, you really shouldn't be having sex.

·Think of what she would like rather than what
you like. Make her enjoyment the most important thing in the world - from how
you talk to her, how you touch her and how you treat her afterwards. Women have
been conditioned to make your experience paramount, turn the tables on that. Don't assume that what worked for the last girl will work for the next girl. Explore and discover - never assume.

·…and
lastly, don’t slut shame us after, don’t talk about us like we’re trash to your
friends. Even if you include yourself in it, shame doesn’t stick to you the way
it sticks to us.

Genuine guys don’t fetishise purity….

While I enjoy the beauty and pleasure of sex. I also enjoy
the awkwardness, the humour and the absolute absurdity of it. Sex is absurd –
absolutely – fundamentally -absurd. It’s weird. It’s messy. It’s gloriously
uncouth (look up both meanings). And every living thing does it. It connects us
to the primordial ooze we stepped out of -and therein might lie the problem. We
keep trying to evolve away from the primordial ooze and sex puts us right back
in it.

We’ve tried to redeem sex by inextricably connecting it to
love – in the same way we’ve tried to elevate our need for nutrition by
innovations in fine dining. But at the beginning of that dining experience is
slaughter (even if it is merely the slaughter of plants for vegans and
vegetarians) and it ends in the excretion of shit no matter how pretty your
plate looks before consumption. We cannot extricate ourselves from those human
processes and instead of embracing the extraordinary functioning of our bodies,
we have tried to vilify those functions and shame our higher selves for
needing/wanting/indulging them.

We’ve also tried to erase the carnal aspects of sex by
fetishizing the purity of girls and commodifying everything female except the
vulva - though if standards of decency were relaxed, I’m sure there would be
thousands of media campaigns objectifying every aspect of female anatomy. The interesting
thing about the commodification of female anatomy is that when media campaigns
are meant to entice 12-year-old boys, the female form is perfected and
glorified, but when media campaigns are meant to entice girls, the message is
that their inherent form is imperfect and malignant and must be corrected.

Our
legs must be shaved, our breasts must be pushed up, our tummies must be flat,
our skin must be flawless, our sweat must be stopped, our scent must be changed
and our labia majora must be waxed. In my experience, genuine guys don’t give a
shit about any of that, but assholes do.

In my experience, genuine guys like women who have
experience and know what they’re doing, while assholes put a premium on purity –
while at the same time wanting a perfect sexual experience. There are times
when jealousy rears its head because of some perceived insecurity on their part,
but genuine guys don’t slut shame women about their previous partners, and
assholes do. Assholes think that if a woman has been around the block, that
gives them uncorroborated permission to do whatever they like in the bedroom. And assholes tend to
look for ways of diminishing and degrading women out of their own deeply felt
insecurities. No one -no one – raises themselves up by putting others down - ever.

I know a lot of genuine guys. I also know more assholes than
I would like to know, and the differences usually reveal themselves in short order. I think men
who are assholes want to and like blurring the lines between the good guys and
themselves because they think it helps them get away with their absolute shit
behaviour. They will have no problem throwing good men under the bus to save
their own sorry asses while treating women like disposable objects that only
have value when we fulfil their pleasure quotient. This means good men are now
at the peril of assholes, the way women have been since forever. It is not a
club I welcome good men into with open arms because it’s a sucky club. However,
I certainly welcome the additional help in fighting the assholes.

Right now, I think a lot of good men are cowed by anxiety
and fear because they know the assholes can and will lump themselves in with
the good guys in order to paint all men as creeps. I think this is the danger
of the Al Franken situation.

Slut Shaming and the Al Franken
Double Standard…

We can debate if Leeann Tweeden has a right to accuse
Franken of sexual misconduct while she was a model of FHM and Playboy (which is
a clear case of slut shaming) until the cows come home. That it’s up for debate
at all is the problem. Why aren’t the HRC gang not standing with Tweeden? Why
are some of them even joining in the slut shaming? Because they don’t like her
or her politics. And that’s the ball game ladies. We just lost what should have been a shutout.

Either the principle of sexual misconduct matters or it doesn’t.
No matter how much we like the pitcher and no matter how much we hate the receiver,
no matter how much the game is rigged against our side, sexual harassment is
sexual harassment.

I would bet a million dollars that the women who want to
save Franken by demonising Tweeden are the same women who championed President
Clinton while demonising Monica Lewinsky – and when we wake up tomorrow and
years down the road and ask ourselves why didn’t this watershed #MeToo moment
turn into real substantive change, we’ll have to look in the mirror and remind
ourselves that in both cases we put the personality of the men above the principles
of the harassment and we didn’t give credence to the #MeToo women we didn’t
like or who weren’t in our click.

That Franken doesn’t remember the incidents with any of the
other pictures or the groping, is also seriously problematic. If you grope and
grab people, you know you do. If you don’t, you know you don’t. That he doesn’t
remember and that he’s leaving open the possibility that he did means he
probably has groped. If he’s never thought anything of it, that’s problematic
because it means he tacitly believes women’s bodies are fodder for his hands. It’s
not like there are stories yet of him being handsy with men.

Is it possible he
only ever gropes women from the opposite political spectrum because he doesn’t
like Republican women? Or he wants to diminish women who own guns? Or he wants
to degrade women who believe in school prayer? Or because he knows he can get away
with it politically because Democrats don’t like those kinds of women anyway? If
it turns out that he’s hedging and that he did grope any of those women, then
we’ve sold out the cause for an asshole and I don’t think we should make that
bet. Not now.

I had an uncle in-law, who was a priest, who grabbed my ass
so fervently his finger went up my anus. I had to go to the bathroom to pull my
underwear out from inside of my ass. I was 19. There was nothing subtle about
it and that man knew exactly what he had done. I told my mother what happened
as soon as I could get her alone. I wanted to scream at that man, but it would
have traumatised my aunt and uncle, so I only told my mother. I was furious. I
remember it distinctly to this day. If that man (who is no longer among us) were
about to take a prominent position within the Church would I bring this
incident up: probably. Would it be politically and religiously (or
anti-religiously) motivated: yes. Would that change in any way what happened:
no. Am I sexually promiscuous, devoid of commonplace morality, and could I be
labelled a sexual deviant: yes. Do I deserve to be slut shamed if I were to
speak out against this man? Does he deserve your solidarity because he's on
your side?

I don't think Franken is worth the risk…

None of the genuine men I know have ever even come close to
touching me inappropriately – ever. Franken’s behaviour smacks to me of men who blur
the line or who don’t know the line exists. The men who don’t blur the line and
the men who know the lines exists deserve my support but not this guy. And by the way, many of the genuine guys I'm talking about don't subscribe to vanilla morality but they have more integrity
and ethics than some of those who claim moral authority. I care less about a man’s morality and far
more about a man’s integrity. And I want to champion the men I know who are
genuine and decent in this time of fear and turmoil more than I want to support
men like Franken. I just can’t let the assholes win by taking us back to a
puritanical time when women like me would be branded with scarlet A’s and men
like Franken and President Clinton would merely be called libertines. And that
seems to be the direction we’re heading if only women of purity have the moral authority
to call out harassment and only men we dislike get held to account.

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About Me

Stephanie is an international theatrical director working in a wide range of genres, styles and theatrical theories. She specialises in Shakespeare, devised works, and new play writing. While directing is Stephanie's main focus, occasionally she enjoys storytelling as an actor. She spends almost all of her spare time writing.